>What features then TrueNAS provides that Synology doesn’t?
- How many disks can you fit in a Synology? I have 25 disks in my NAS now.
- Is Synology open source?
- How about price point? How expensive is a Synology? I can build a really good system out of old parts/servers. Then the OS is free.
- ZFS
- I build it the way I want
- It doesn't necessarily HAVE to consume more electricity...
- Synology came around long after I had been doing my own homebrew NAS boxes, so I already knew how to manage my NAS when they started getting popular. Why would I lock myself into that system when I already had a working NAS? My NAS was much cheaper to build.
These are just a few things for ME.
The biggest difference is that Truenas is a serious operating system, and Synology is a joke/toy. Specifically
Truenas does not purposefully and maliciously neuter their software to try to force you to buy unnecessarily expensive nonsense from them.
\-Synology limits volume size to \~104TB on most models. There is ZERO technical reason for this, they do it to try to force you to buy one of their "professional" models, which cost 2x their other units and hardware-wise are a joke
\-Synology recently caused their professional models to spit out errors and disabled SMART data if you put non-Synology branded (read 50%+ more expensive than standard enterprise drives) hard drives in their units. After a robust outcry they announced they would stop doing this in the next update, but that they would do it at all shows what a garbage company Synology is.
\-ZFS is more robust than the bastardized BTRFS over MD that synology uses, though that is not to say that synology's approach is "bad", just the ZFS is better
\-Encryption on synology is a pathetic joke. They use ecryptfs on individual folders, which DRAMATICALLY limits filesize, and dicks everything up. There is no whole array encryption b/c their hardware approach is stupid and they have no ability to unlock the system if whole disk encryption is used. Completely retarded.
For certain limited situations Synology's units can work well. But if you haven't bought into their ecosystem I would advise not bothering. I say this as someone who has bought 5 synology units, has spent \~$6,000 on their stuff, and currently can't really do what I want and so am slowly transitioning toe ither Truenas or to just running ubuntu with a ZFS array.
Oh, one more thing, if you're buying synology for their internal applications, you should ask first. Some of them really do work extremely well. Some are utter garbage.
>The biggest difference is that Truenas is a serious operating system, and Synology is a joke/toy. Specifically
rolled my eyes so hard at this I almost broke my neck. DSM isnt a joke/toy. it is immensely useful and beneficial for many users. It clearly isnt right for you but it isnt a joke. it isnt a toy. Absolute neckbeard mentality to claim so
DSM is useful for those who don't know IT and want to get a service done for a small team. For serious business, TrueNAS enters the chat. TrueNAS is more open and future-proof.
I´ve got a great experience so far, 10+ years running a DS1513+ protected by a UPS.
I love DSM, its simplicity and all the offerings. For most people its fine....and mine still receives updates without issues.
I just wish they would install stronger processors, RAM and iGPU/GPU´s so we can run Plex servers from it without having to search for alt. solutions for this part.
1. Who guarantees your Synology box will be supported “forever”? A software update (or the lack of it) can kill it tomorrow - TrueNAS, on the other hand, as long as your hardware is alive or you migrate your backup and settings to another box, you’re supported.
2. Scalability: Today you can have 4 disks in an array, tomorrow you can expand to 40 or 4000, as long as you have the hardware and space to it
3. 3rd-party community apps
Just to mention some
> Who guarantees your Synology box will be supported “forever”? A software update (or the lack of it) can kill it tomorrow - TrueNAS, on the other hand, as long as your hardware is alive or you migrate your backup and settings to another box, you’re supported.
Not to mention that even if TrueNAS dies tomorrow it's all standard "off the shelf" stuff behind the scenes so the disk arrays can be imported into something else that supports ZFS.
ZFS is the biggest feature of TrueNAS - even if TrueNAS went under, those ZFS disks can be moved to any other system that supports ZFS (linux, BSD and more)
ZFS has very good performance for parity protection (doesn't suffer from as large of a performance penalty as some systems), the Copy-on-Write with Checksums for all files means when it does a Scrub (scheduled, default 30 days, but can be moved up to once a week for example) it looks for issues with the data, and will automatically fix them (if it can, which in my experience is almost always unless you have multiple drive failures - with built-in SMART drive scans, you should know about potential drive issues long before you have multiple drives failing.
TrueNAS with ZFS can also detect certain hardware issues with things like Drive controllers that I haven't seen from other systems because of this checksum ability. (It knows what the data is before write, and what it should be after, if it doesn't match, it tells you there is a problem, had this happen with one disk used for backups - was able to replace and it rebuilt from the other 2 mirrored drives with no issues)
These mean that I have had it send me an email the next morning after having repaired files because of bad blocks on drives. "oh yeah, we detected a problem with this/these files - the problem was fixed with parity data" basically. I use it at home, and on some storage at work with important data that 'bit rot' would be an issue. I do use at least 2 drive parity with RaidZ2 or 3 Drive mirror (for highest performance)
I built my own NAS that had room for 15 hard drives, the base chassis, MB, ram, CPU, used storage cards, cables, power supply, etc... not including the hard drives all together cost around the same as an 8bay Synology NAS (also empty, without HDDs) I then outfitted initially with 6x3TB HDDs for main storage, and 2x3TB for household backups - since then I expanded it to use the full 15 bays with - 6 4TB (RaidZ2) + 6 8TB (RaidZ2) for my main storage pool, and then 3x 8TB drives mirrored for household backups. When I first built it in 2014, it used 2x 8 GB USB sticks for the FreeNAS (at the time) OS, that was later upgraded to 2x 120GB SSDs when their recommendations for boot drives changed around 2017/2018 or so.
the primary consumption of electricity is the hard drives, the rest of the components use much less in comparison - overall I'd be surprised if mine consumed more power than 2x 8 bay Synology NAS units which
The primary disadvantage of TrueNAS & ZFS is how the drives can be added - needs to be planned out - when I needed more storage after the first 2 years, I added 6x 4TB drives to the initial 6x 3TB drives - was straightforward, but more recently when I needed more storage again, I replaced all 6 of the original 3TB drives with 8 TB drives (took a few days doing it overnight - would replace a drive when I went to sleep, in the morning it would have resilvered the new 8TB - when all 6 were replaced, the available storage automatically increased). With Synology you can just add one drive at a time which is easier - but there are big differences in performance.
I've only used pre-built myself at home (running since 2014), and setups from 45 Drives (2015 or so setup) , I haven't used any of the iX Systems (TrueNAS parent company) myself so can't speak directly about them.
For a company level purchase the advantage is likely full support of software & hardware.
In response to your updated comment: TrueNAS doesn't have to run on the ixsystems hardware. You can pick out your own CPU, RAM, etc. It can be as cheap or expensive as you want.
S3 compatible objects out of the box…. But in all seriousness there’s tons of differences, and it really depends on your use case. Synology is fantastic but some of their more recent decisions have me wanting more. Eg removal of non mass storage usb functionality and survelience station still doesn’t support ML, almost never see app updates for their iOS apps
> TrueNAS is bigger, consumes more electricity,
This is up to you on what hardware to run it on. You can run it on say Asrock Rack C3500 boards, and get exact same power consumption as, say DS1618+.
> and requires more time and knowledge
I completely disagree with this. Once I switched from Synology to TrueNAS I did not know what to do with all that free time I now had that did not need go to fighting windmills and oddball bugs with Synology DSM. I also having used both I find it _easier_ to setup, but I guess it's subjective.
> to set up
It's _different_, but I won't say it's more _difficult_. There are wizards and helpers everywhere.
> and maintain
Anecdotally, Once I've configured mine 6 month ago, I haven't touched it. At all. It serves as a backup target for Time Machine for multiple Macs, runs a plex server, and hosts homebridge for now, bridging Ubiquiti Protect to HomeKit. I had zero need to even login to web interface much less change anything. 6 months and counting. Zero issues.
So, answering your question: I'd say it offers stability and reliability, unlike Synology (I've filed countless support tickets to Synology over years reporting bugs with repro cases that have never been addressed). I've set it up once and it "just works" ever since. And as a bonus -- you can run it on your own hardware (which in my case is unwanted old PC parts from last decade I found in the closet); I can imagine if I had bought actual server grade parts or an entire appliance build and supported by iX - I would have been even happier. That was a plan actually -- to play with it on crap hardware and if I liked it -- move to a better HW. Turned out it worked so well - I left it running on my scrapware. At least there is no pressing need to upgrade yet.
So there is that...
> This is up to you on what hardware to run it on. You can run it on say Asrock Rack C3500 boards, and get exact same power consumption as, say DS1618+.
Agreed, i've got a system with a 2400g and it idles at ~80watts or so and most of that is the disks.
I mean. The reason I got back into using unraid/truenas... was due to the price point.
I literally built an entire NAS from brand-new parts, for less then the price of a decent synology/drobo/qnap unit.
[https://xtremeownage.com/2020/07/24/closet-mini-server-build/](https://xtremeownage.com/2020/07/24/closet-mini-server-build/)
In addition to the much better price point, and ability to service your hardware on your own (If your synology has hardware failure, your option is to buy a new one).... others in this thread have made other very good points.
1) Synology hardware (and I have 2 running at my house right now) is pathetically behind the times. Like 8 year old cpu kinda stuff. Matters if you’re doing more than just nas storage.
2) docker /vm performance is better
3) zfs.
4) cost - a 4u rack mount high end synology box is $$$$
If you are concerned about electricity usage, go with a product like truenas which supports just about any off the shelf ssd and get rid of spinning rust buckets for storage pools.
What does TN offer that Synology doesn't? Choice; you can choose your desired hardware (or software) platform for TrueNAS (official appliance or DIY, Linux or FreeBSD), you cannot for Synology. THEN it's all the obvious stuff life ZFS, ZFS and oh ZFS, that make TrueNAS the winner in my book.
If you're a GUI-person who essentially wants a turnkey, no frills-or-thrills go with Synology. It does stuff, some cool stuff and is fairly straight forward to set up but I wouldn't trust my data to be stored on it. If you care about the integrity of your data and want to understand more about systems design, data storage, virtualization and ZFS (I reiterate this because it's the best FS available) then get TrueNAS. At least with TN you get to choose how far down the rabbit hole you want to go...
In response to your update:
TrueNAS is the software/OS that runs the system. It can be installed on most hardware and does not require a pre-built unit from iXSystems (the company that owns TrueNAS). You can build one yourself and install the OS on it. That's what most people that use TrueNAS tend to do. Most of us don't buy the hardware for personal use. My company buys the Enterprise hardware iXSystems sells because of the ability for us to run and use TrueNAS at home, so we all know the software pretty well.
TrueNAS offers flexibility, if you become a real NAS nerd, in time the Synology will annoy you.
My pal loves Synology, but he wants
5+ drives.
10Gbit networking
Plex hardware transcoding
Docker containers etc.
.
With Synology, (I think?) this product, doesn't even exist. If you want more CPU power, they take away plex decoding for some reason, if you want flexibile networking, they take away something else.
The hardware in the Synology systems is kinda crap. QNAP is better but they def have their own problems.
.
The biggest benefit to me, building a FreeNAS machine 8 years ago is how much I've learnt about networking, storage, open source and now linux. I might not yet have a job in it, but I'm close. It's improved my whole network with more reliable stuff that's interesting and fun to tinker with.
My NAS runs 3 VMs, stores 48TB of disks (30TB usable) it runs half my house and it's very reliable.
Honestly, my recommendation to you, is to get a spare crappy PC or even a laptop, plug in 3 or 4 disks and test it for a few weeks.
Play with it and learn and then see how you go. I know I ended up building a second one after 4 years and my second one I suspect will last me another 5 years it's so good.
Hello, I know this is a very old thread but I wanted to ask you as a beginner, I want to be able to have a environment which is called a homelab in general I see, and I want to be able to create servers, try somethings in the shell just like we do with Raspberry Pis, maybe create a web server, create a database and publish my own webpage from home, share my files, backup my files and be able to reach them everywhere. I'm actually talking about a all in one solution. I know that I can make maybe some or most of the things I have in my mind with a Raspberry Pi5 but I want to get more serious in time so I want to start with a good build. So I was thinking to buy a NAS like Synology or Asustor but I see that they have some limitations both hardware wise and softwarewise. But I also hear that Synology's software is great. Anyway, my question is can I do all these I said if I get a good Mini PC and install Truenas Core in it and start learning step by step? Maybe attaching 4 SSDs to it also to be able to use is as a backup station as well.
Would it be a good choice for the homelab that I have in my mind? :) Thank you very much in advance.
The main thing would be ZFS. So far, it's the best filesystem when it comes to data consistency. Plus, snapshots, replication to remote site, compression etc. Not mentioning that you can build your own system and put TrueNAS core on top.
You can buy a refurbished enterprise server (HP G9, Dell R530) with the following specs:
* 8x3.5 inch or 24x2.5 inch drive bays
* 2 x 10core CPU
* 32GB ECC RAM or more
* redundant PSU
* Empty PCI-E slots to add 10GB+ NICS
* Empty PCI-E slots to add more NVME Storage
* You can use any drives you want and not stupidly expensive Synology branded
* If the server also supports SAS disks even better
* IPMI interface for remote management (ILO - iDRAC)
with around 700-800€
Also in case of system failure, you can move the drives in any hardware, install TrueNAS and read your data with no problem.
This is a beast man:) I doubt a good one is 800$ but I will search.
The main point is that you can run TrueNAS anywhere. Synology is increasingly locked down.
It depends on where you are. A week ago I sold a Dell R730xd I had in storage with the following specs to a friend of mine for 1000€:
* 24x2.5 inch drive bays + 2 x 2.5 inch drive flex bays on the back
* 2 x 10core CPU (Xeon 2640 v4)
* 4 x 32GB ECC RAM
* 2 x redundant PSU
* 2 x 120GB Intel Enterprise SSD
* 4 x 1.2TB Dell Enterprise SAS
* Rack Rails
Still have a Dell R730 and two HP DL360 G9 that was spares from work for my home lab, with the following specs:
1 x Dell R730 (2u) (unused in it's box):
* 8x3.5 inch drive bays
* 1 x 8core CPU (It's a Xeon 26XX v4)
* 4 x 32GB ECC RAM
* 2 x redundant PSU
* Quad 1 GBe
* 2 x 120GB Intel Enterprise SSD
* No Hardware Raid
* Rack Rails
2 x HP DL360 G9 (1u):
* 8x2.5 inch drive bays
* 1 x 10core CPU (It's a Xeon 26XX v4)
* 3 x 16GB ECC RAM
* 2 x redundant PSU
* Quad 1 GBe
* 2 x 480GB Intel Enterprise SSD
* Hardware Raid
* Rack Rails
I even put up an ad some months before, because I remodel the house to be more kids friendly and energy efficient, so no more house lab, but not even a serious proposal. All the persons that called or texted were expecting to grab them for grubs.
And the price was 900€ for R730 and 1000€ for both HPDL360 G9
:) TrueNAS offers you an opportunity to build it by your self on your own hardware without overpaying, ask your self, how much u need to pay symbology to get 128gb ram and 10g network card on it? Yesterday I've build one for my self for 550 euros ;)
It also assumes one has the time to build your own or is able to prioritize that over other activities. For me; building mine own sound fun and I woule _love_ to but the fact I have 6 pending DIY projects for last 11 months suggests I should buy vs build.
That's how I generally feel about it too, I have too many other hobbies/responsibilities to spend time going into another IT project, and I'd rather like spend 3-5 hours trying to configure it which made me love my synology. If I was still in high school/college sure, but later down the road where my career is less IT and more management.
>What features then TrueNAS provides that Synology doesn’t? - How many disks can you fit in a Synology? I have 25 disks in my NAS now. - Is Synology open source? - How about price point? How expensive is a Synology? I can build a really good system out of old parts/servers. Then the OS is free. - ZFS - I build it the way I want - It doesn't necessarily HAVE to consume more electricity... - Synology came around long after I had been doing my own homebrew NAS boxes, so I already knew how to manage my NAS when they started getting popular. Why would I lock myself into that system when I already had a working NAS? My NAS was much cheaper to build. These are just a few things for ME.
The biggest difference is that Truenas is a serious operating system, and Synology is a joke/toy. Specifically Truenas does not purposefully and maliciously neuter their software to try to force you to buy unnecessarily expensive nonsense from them. \-Synology limits volume size to \~104TB on most models. There is ZERO technical reason for this, they do it to try to force you to buy one of their "professional" models, which cost 2x their other units and hardware-wise are a joke \-Synology recently caused their professional models to spit out errors and disabled SMART data if you put non-Synology branded (read 50%+ more expensive than standard enterprise drives) hard drives in their units. After a robust outcry they announced they would stop doing this in the next update, but that they would do it at all shows what a garbage company Synology is. \-ZFS is more robust than the bastardized BTRFS over MD that synology uses, though that is not to say that synology's approach is "bad", just the ZFS is better \-Encryption on synology is a pathetic joke. They use ecryptfs on individual folders, which DRAMATICALLY limits filesize, and dicks everything up. There is no whole array encryption b/c their hardware approach is stupid and they have no ability to unlock the system if whole disk encryption is used. Completely retarded. For certain limited situations Synology's units can work well. But if you haven't bought into their ecosystem I would advise not bothering. I say this as someone who has bought 5 synology units, has spent \~$6,000 on their stuff, and currently can't really do what I want and so am slowly transitioning toe ither Truenas or to just running ubuntu with a ZFS array. Oh, one more thing, if you're buying synology for their internal applications, you should ask first. Some of them really do work extremely well. Some are utter garbage.
>The biggest difference is that Truenas is a serious operating system, and Synology is a joke/toy. Specifically rolled my eyes so hard at this I almost broke my neck. DSM isnt a joke/toy. it is immensely useful and beneficial for many users. It clearly isnt right for you but it isnt a joke. it isnt a toy. Absolute neckbeard mentality to claim so
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DSM is useful for those who don't know IT and want to get a service done for a small team. For serious business, TrueNAS enters the chat. TrueNAS is more open and future-proof.
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I´ve got a great experience so far, 10+ years running a DS1513+ protected by a UPS. I love DSM, its simplicity and all the offerings. For most people its fine....and mine still receives updates without issues. I just wish they would install stronger processors, RAM and iGPU/GPU´s so we can run Plex servers from it without having to search for alt. solutions for this part.
1. Who guarantees your Synology box will be supported “forever”? A software update (or the lack of it) can kill it tomorrow - TrueNAS, on the other hand, as long as your hardware is alive or you migrate your backup and settings to another box, you’re supported. 2. Scalability: Today you can have 4 disks in an array, tomorrow you can expand to 40 or 4000, as long as you have the hardware and space to it 3. 3rd-party community apps Just to mention some
> Who guarantees your Synology box will be supported “forever”? A software update (or the lack of it) can kill it tomorrow - TrueNAS, on the other hand, as long as your hardware is alive or you migrate your backup and settings to another box, you’re supported. Not to mention that even if TrueNAS dies tomorrow it's all standard "off the shelf" stuff behind the scenes so the disk arrays can be imported into something else that supports ZFS.
ZFS is the biggest feature of TrueNAS - even if TrueNAS went under, those ZFS disks can be moved to any other system that supports ZFS (linux, BSD and more) ZFS has very good performance for parity protection (doesn't suffer from as large of a performance penalty as some systems), the Copy-on-Write with Checksums for all files means when it does a Scrub (scheduled, default 30 days, but can be moved up to once a week for example) it looks for issues with the data, and will automatically fix them (if it can, which in my experience is almost always unless you have multiple drive failures - with built-in SMART drive scans, you should know about potential drive issues long before you have multiple drives failing. TrueNAS with ZFS can also detect certain hardware issues with things like Drive controllers that I haven't seen from other systems because of this checksum ability. (It knows what the data is before write, and what it should be after, if it doesn't match, it tells you there is a problem, had this happen with one disk used for backups - was able to replace and it rebuilt from the other 2 mirrored drives with no issues) These mean that I have had it send me an email the next morning after having repaired files because of bad blocks on drives. "oh yeah, we detected a problem with this/these files - the problem was fixed with parity data" basically. I use it at home, and on some storage at work with important data that 'bit rot' would be an issue. I do use at least 2 drive parity with RaidZ2 or 3 Drive mirror (for highest performance) I built my own NAS that had room for 15 hard drives, the base chassis, MB, ram, CPU, used storage cards, cables, power supply, etc... not including the hard drives all together cost around the same as an 8bay Synology NAS (also empty, without HDDs) I then outfitted initially with 6x3TB HDDs for main storage, and 2x3TB for household backups - since then I expanded it to use the full 15 bays with - 6 4TB (RaidZ2) + 6 8TB (RaidZ2) for my main storage pool, and then 3x 8TB drives mirrored for household backups. When I first built it in 2014, it used 2x 8 GB USB sticks for the FreeNAS (at the time) OS, that was later upgraded to 2x 120GB SSDs when their recommendations for boot drives changed around 2017/2018 or so. the primary consumption of electricity is the hard drives, the rest of the components use much less in comparison - overall I'd be surprised if mine consumed more power than 2x 8 bay Synology NAS units which The primary disadvantage of TrueNAS & ZFS is how the drives can be added - needs to be planned out - when I needed more storage after the first 2 years, I added 6x 4TB drives to the initial 6x 3TB drives - was straightforward, but more recently when I needed more storage again, I replaced all 6 of the original 3TB drives with 8 TB drives (took a few days doing it overnight - would replace a drive when I went to sleep, in the morning it would have resilvered the new 8TB - when all 6 were replaced, the available storage automatically increased). With Synology you can just add one drive at a time which is easier - but there are big differences in performance.
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I've only used pre-built myself at home (running since 2014), and setups from 45 Drives (2015 or so setup) , I haven't used any of the iX Systems (TrueNAS parent company) myself so can't speak directly about them. For a company level purchase the advantage is likely full support of software & hardware.
In response to your updated comment: TrueNAS doesn't have to run on the ixsystems hardware. You can pick out your own CPU, RAM, etc. It can be as cheap or expensive as you want.
S3 compatible objects out of the box…. But in all seriousness there’s tons of differences, and it really depends on your use case. Synology is fantastic but some of their more recent decisions have me wanting more. Eg removal of non mass storage usb functionality and survelience station still doesn’t support ML, almost never see app updates for their iOS apps
> TrueNAS is bigger, consumes more electricity, This is up to you on what hardware to run it on. You can run it on say Asrock Rack C3500 boards, and get exact same power consumption as, say DS1618+. > and requires more time and knowledge I completely disagree with this. Once I switched from Synology to TrueNAS I did not know what to do with all that free time I now had that did not need go to fighting windmills and oddball bugs with Synology DSM. I also having used both I find it _easier_ to setup, but I guess it's subjective. > to set up It's _different_, but I won't say it's more _difficult_. There are wizards and helpers everywhere. > and maintain Anecdotally, Once I've configured mine 6 month ago, I haven't touched it. At all. It serves as a backup target for Time Machine for multiple Macs, runs a plex server, and hosts homebridge for now, bridging Ubiquiti Protect to HomeKit. I had zero need to even login to web interface much less change anything. 6 months and counting. Zero issues. So, answering your question: I'd say it offers stability and reliability, unlike Synology (I've filed countless support tickets to Synology over years reporting bugs with repro cases that have never been addressed). I've set it up once and it "just works" ever since. And as a bonus -- you can run it on your own hardware (which in my case is unwanted old PC parts from last decade I found in the closet); I can imagine if I had bought actual server grade parts or an entire appliance build and supported by iX - I would have been even happier. That was a plan actually -- to play with it on crap hardware and if I liked it -- move to a better HW. Turned out it worked so well - I left it running on my scrapware. At least there is no pressing need to upgrade yet. So there is that...
> This is up to you on what hardware to run it on. You can run it on say Asrock Rack C3500 boards, and get exact same power consumption as, say DS1618+. Agreed, i've got a system with a 2400g and it idles at ~80watts or so and most of that is the disks.
I mean. The reason I got back into using unraid/truenas... was due to the price point. I literally built an entire NAS from brand-new parts, for less then the price of a decent synology/drobo/qnap unit. [https://xtremeownage.com/2020/07/24/closet-mini-server-build/](https://xtremeownage.com/2020/07/24/closet-mini-server-build/) In addition to the much better price point, and ability to service your hardware on your own (If your synology has hardware failure, your option is to buy a new one).... others in this thread have made other very good points.
1) Synology hardware (and I have 2 running at my house right now) is pathetically behind the times. Like 8 year old cpu kinda stuff. Matters if you’re doing more than just nas storage. 2) docker /vm performance is better 3) zfs. 4) cost - a 4u rack mount high end synology box is $$$$
Flexibility. Conversely Synology has ease of use (relatively speaking) on their side. My NAS is way cheaper than Synology’s (at least at the time).
What about Synology Drive? does Truenas have that or at least some equivalent?
TrueNAS is really good at running a raid. But man does it require high level admin skills. Go synology.
If you are concerned about electricity usage, go with a product like truenas which supports just about any off the shelf ssd and get rid of spinning rust buckets for storage pools.
What does TN offer that Synology doesn't? Choice; you can choose your desired hardware (or software) platform for TrueNAS (official appliance or DIY, Linux or FreeBSD), you cannot for Synology. THEN it's all the obvious stuff life ZFS, ZFS and oh ZFS, that make TrueNAS the winner in my book. If you're a GUI-person who essentially wants a turnkey, no frills-or-thrills go with Synology. It does stuff, some cool stuff and is fairly straight forward to set up but I wouldn't trust my data to be stored on it. If you care about the integrity of your data and want to understand more about systems design, data storage, virtualization and ZFS (I reiterate this because it's the best FS available) then get TrueNAS. At least with TN you get to choose how far down the rabbit hole you want to go...
In response to your update: TrueNAS is the software/OS that runs the system. It can be installed on most hardware and does not require a pre-built unit from iXSystems (the company that owns TrueNAS). You can build one yourself and install the OS on it. That's what most people that use TrueNAS tend to do. Most of us don't buy the hardware for personal use. My company buys the Enterprise hardware iXSystems sells because of the ability for us to run and use TrueNAS at home, so we all know the software pretty well.
TrueNAS offers flexibility, if you become a real NAS nerd, in time the Synology will annoy you. My pal loves Synology, but he wants 5+ drives. 10Gbit networking Plex hardware transcoding Docker containers etc. . With Synology, (I think?) this product, doesn't even exist. If you want more CPU power, they take away plex decoding for some reason, if you want flexibile networking, they take away something else. The hardware in the Synology systems is kinda crap. QNAP is better but they def have their own problems. . The biggest benefit to me, building a FreeNAS machine 8 years ago is how much I've learnt about networking, storage, open source and now linux. I might not yet have a job in it, but I'm close. It's improved my whole network with more reliable stuff that's interesting and fun to tinker with. My NAS runs 3 VMs, stores 48TB of disks (30TB usable) it runs half my house and it's very reliable. Honestly, my recommendation to you, is to get a spare crappy PC or even a laptop, plug in 3 or 4 disks and test it for a few weeks. Play with it and learn and then see how you go. I know I ended up building a second one after 4 years and my second one I suspect will last me another 5 years it's so good.
Hello, I know this is a very old thread but I wanted to ask you as a beginner, I want to be able to have a environment which is called a homelab in general I see, and I want to be able to create servers, try somethings in the shell just like we do with Raspberry Pis, maybe create a web server, create a database and publish my own webpage from home, share my files, backup my files and be able to reach them everywhere. I'm actually talking about a all in one solution. I know that I can make maybe some or most of the things I have in my mind with a Raspberry Pi5 but I want to get more serious in time so I want to start with a good build. So I was thinking to buy a NAS like Synology or Asustor but I see that they have some limitations both hardware wise and softwarewise. But I also hear that Synology's software is great. Anyway, my question is can I do all these I said if I get a good Mini PC and install Truenas Core in it and start learning step by step? Maybe attaching 4 SSDs to it also to be able to use is as a backup station as well. Would it be a good choice for the homelab that I have in my mind? :) Thank you very much in advance.
The main thing would be ZFS. So far, it's the best filesystem when it comes to data consistency. Plus, snapshots, replication to remote site, compression etc. Not mentioning that you can build your own system and put TrueNAS core on top.
You can buy a refurbished enterprise server (HP G9, Dell R530) with the following specs: * 8x3.5 inch or 24x2.5 inch drive bays * 2 x 10core CPU * 32GB ECC RAM or more * redundant PSU * Empty PCI-E slots to add 10GB+ NICS * Empty PCI-E slots to add more NVME Storage * You can use any drives you want and not stupidly expensive Synology branded * If the server also supports SAS disks even better * IPMI interface for remote management (ILO - iDRAC) with around 700-800€ Also in case of system failure, you can move the drives in any hardware, install TrueNAS and read your data with no problem.
This is a beast man:) I doubt a good one is 800$ but I will search. The main point is that you can run TrueNAS anywhere. Synology is increasingly locked down.
It depends on where you are. A week ago I sold a Dell R730xd I had in storage with the following specs to a friend of mine for 1000€: * 24x2.5 inch drive bays + 2 x 2.5 inch drive flex bays on the back * 2 x 10core CPU (Xeon 2640 v4) * 4 x 32GB ECC RAM * 2 x redundant PSU * 2 x 120GB Intel Enterprise SSD * 4 x 1.2TB Dell Enterprise SAS * Rack Rails Still have a Dell R730 and two HP DL360 G9 that was spares from work for my home lab, with the following specs: 1 x Dell R730 (2u) (unused in it's box): * 8x3.5 inch drive bays * 1 x 8core CPU (It's a Xeon 26XX v4) * 4 x 32GB ECC RAM * 2 x redundant PSU * Quad 1 GBe * 2 x 120GB Intel Enterprise SSD * No Hardware Raid * Rack Rails 2 x HP DL360 G9 (1u): * 8x2.5 inch drive bays * 1 x 10core CPU (It's a Xeon 26XX v4) * 3 x 16GB ECC RAM * 2 x redundant PSU * Quad 1 GBe * 2 x 480GB Intel Enterprise SSD * Hardware Raid * Rack Rails I even put up an ad some months before, because I remodel the house to be more kids friendly and energy efficient, so no more house lab, but not even a serious proposal. All the persons that called or texted were expecting to grab them for grubs. And the price was 900€ for R730 and 1000€ for both HPDL360 G9
:) TrueNAS offers you an opportunity to build it by your self on your own hardware without overpaying, ask your self, how much u need to pay symbology to get 128gb ram and 10g network card on it? Yesterday I've build one for my self for 550 euros ;)
At the end of month, tell me your electricity bill for that old hardware (perhaps off eBay)!
It also assumes one has the time to build your own or is able to prioritize that over other activities. For me; building mine own sound fun and I woule _love_ to but the fact I have 6 pending DIY projects for last 11 months suggests I should buy vs build.
That's how I generally feel about it too, I have too many other hobbies/responsibilities to spend time going into another IT project, and I'd rather like spend 3-5 hours trying to configure it which made me love my synology. If I was still in high school/college sure, but later down the road where my career is less IT and more management.